


Indigo Dream

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Asphyxiation, Break Up, Dark, Hate Sex, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, One Night Stands, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Sad and Beautiful, Self-Destruction, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 10:39:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16763497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: He fucks into Arthur. He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t need to. The honor has always been his. But his movements are languid and slow. Like there is nowhere for them to be, no worries lurking round the bend of the clock. He licks Arthur open, uses his fingers to pry him apart. He fits himself into every crevice and settles like he owns the space. He might, but Arthur won’t admit it. There are new scars on his knuckles, and thick muscles on his back, and when Arthur cries out, when he spills against dark curls, he’s surprised by the silent shuddering that answers. He almost misses the litany of curses.





	Indigo Dream

“Your hair is the wrong shade of an indigo dream.” Arthur says as his midnight lover slips out of bed. They are all mid-something lovers these days. Strange faebles slipping into his bed, cold nightmares blanketing his chest. He is searching, for sharp hips that fit his hands and broad shoulders made of glass. 

He fucks into a boy with dew drop eyes, and kisses cheeks that are too round. Then he rolls over as the kid steals the cash from his drawer, paying for his own regrets. He fucks the kid three more nights; slow thrust into a mouth not built for cursing, angry jerks against a cock that’s not quit thick enough. He lets the boy fuck him, just once, spastic and unrhythmic. There are no teeth against his shoulders, no nails digging into his thigh, and when he kicks the boy out, the curses barely glint off his bitter skin. 

“Your mouth is an infected rose,” Arthur hisses, blood dripping from his chin. His midday lover stands naked in his doorway, fist bruised and still swinging. It turns out, lovers don’t like it when you whisper another’s name. But this one, this little feral thing, he’d been so close to what Arthur had needed. A back dotted with abandoned stars, fingers that fit snug inside of him. A little too soft, a little too gentle, but when he kissed Arthur with those swollen lips, when he bit hard enough to bruises, Arthur had taste sweat and childhood and forgotten lullabies. The name had slipped from him unbidden with a quick snap of the boy’s hips. He doesn’t want to let the boy dress. He wants a dramatic fight and a screaming match so he can say all the things he never did before, but he owes his neighbors better so he cleans himself in the bathroom and when he comes out, the loft is empty.

“Your hands fit like an ill measured chain,” Arthur snarls. He is lying, as he always does with his midmorning lover. Those hands, broad and calloused, fit around his throat perfectly. Too perfect. A fit carved from the bowels of the earth, just to tease him. He thrust up, tries to fuck into the crease of the hip, but he lover is vicious and cruel and so close to home when he lifts his own hips too high. It’s so much like the games played in an abandoned cottage, that if Arthur closes his eyes, he’s back in that musky heat listening to cruel taunts peppered between fairy kisses. But he doesn’t close his eyes, doesn’t lose sight of red scruff and hateful eyes. His vision spots and dances, firecracker blues and reds and purples and oranges. His chest is frantic, or maybe his mind, as his lungs fight those tailored-glove hands. He scrabbles, or he tries to, but then he’s coming and his lover spurts on his chest, and when everything’s right, when he can breath again, he’s alone in a bed too big for one. 

In the evening, the bruises are the prettiest shade of violet he’s ever seen. 

He discards them quickly after that. Fucks them in hallways, lets them fuck him in clubs. They’re too young, too soft, faces too hard and eyes too grey. None of them  _ fit  _ him the way his memories do. But he thrust, and he comes, and his back is a map of angry red lines and it is never enough. “You taste like stale hopes,” he tells the man whose belly is not soft enough. “You’re a fuck cheaper than a back alley,” he whispers into the man who holds him like he is precious, like Arthur is the gift he traveled the seas for. He doesn’t even say anything to the man he leaves hard and panting in the back room of a seedy bar he found two cities over. He’s itchy with want. He buys a pack of menthols and he inhales them like they’re oxygen. But the burn in his lungs doesn’t sooth the burn behind his eyes. 

The last one, like spin glass beneath his hands, all delicate and beautifully unreal, tells him “Come to me when you realize what you’re looking for can’t be found and isn’t what you want.”

He’s wrong. Arthur doesn’t know how to tell him this. But Arthur has know, always, how to find what he threw away. So he goes. To a sleepy little bookshop on the corner of 8th, and he slides into a cracked leather chair and sips overly sweet burnt coffee and he waits. The walls are the same; dusty brick, old movie posters, the faintest smell of lilac coated mold. The shelves are almost the same, but there are covers he doesn’t recognize and titles he’s only heard about. The kids behind the counter are  _ so young _ , fresh faced and of another time. 

It’s as quiet now, as it was then. He hates how simple it is to step back in time here. How his mind paints the grey brick blue, how the blond stocking shelves has bright pink hair. He hates the drop off coffee spilling across his knuckles as he pushes a boy away. “You’ll never be enough. Always playing catch up. You’re too young. You’ll always be too young.” As if Arthur was any kind of grown. As if two degrees really meant anything in the face of his lover, just starting his own degree. But dreams mattered, and paths differed, and Arthur wasn’t an artist but he could still see the beauty in ink stained fingers. “You were just a sleepy distraction. A warm body and cheap entertainment.” He hates watching his own self walk out, jacket slung over his shoulder as the kid stares after him. Mostly, he fucking hates sitting in his car, watching the teen flip the the pages of a ratty notebook, probably writing a poem about the tears he wouldn’t cry. Neither of them had left for hours. Eventually Arthur had caved first, a midmorning interview he needed to prepare for. 

The door opens. The memories don’t dissolve like smoke, so much as explode in Arthur’s face, wearing impossibly tight pants and a fucking awful blue scarf. Arthur doesn’t know who sees who first. It doesn’t matter though, because he’s 28 again and the first grey hairs aren’t marring his temple. But the kid is all grown up. The sharp angles that Arthur used to trace haven’t soften. If anything they’re cut-steel and ready for murder. Blue eyes glance over him. He’s just a nameless ghost haunting a dead man. Indigo hair, wild as ever, a coat that looks as warm as the bed they once shared. Arthur takes all of this in, all of these pieces. This puzzle he’s been building for a decade, suddenly complete before him, is not what he imagined. 

It is so much worse. Because this thing, this dream that has taunted him, does not saunter past. Doesn’t glare at Arthur, or yell, or flick hot liquid in his face. Everything he has been searching for sits in front of him quietly, a fluid movement of awkward limbs with ballerina grace. It speaks to him, the same heavy timber of wind right before a storm. “Are you done pretending you can protect me from reality, then?”

The earth shifts. Or maybe Arthur moves. But he’s kissing lips that are this side of too plush, biting against a jaw peppered with unfamiliar stubble. He’s fitting his hands against a sturdy but narrow waist, bracing himself between lean thighs. It’s all familiar. And entirely brand new. He doesn’t taste like jellybeans and carbonation anymore. Burnt whiskey and caramel lick into Arthur’s mouth. He doesn’t move like he’s finding his legs. When he pushes Arthur off, when he drags him to the hidden apartment upstairs, when he shoves Arthur onto the bed, he is a man who knows what he wants and has experience taking it.

He fucks into Arthur. He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t need to. The honor has always been his. But his movements are languid and slow. Like there is nowhere for them to be, no worries lurking round the bend of the clock. He licks Arthur open, uses his fingers to pry him apart. He fits himself into every crevice and settles like he  _ owns _ the space. He might, but Arthur won’t admit it. There are new scars on his knuckles, and thick muscles on his back, and when Arthur cries out, when he spills against dark curls, he’s surprised by the silent shuddering that answers. He almost misses the litany of curses.

After, when they are clean, when they have eaten, when they are curled into each other under a patchwork quilt, Arthur finally says the name he’s held between his jaws for so long. “Merlin,” he whispers. It breaks the quiet, breaks the spell, but the world doesn’t shift or fade. It stays steady and warm beneath his hands. He can hear the slowing breaths, and he knows there’s no time or room for apologies. So he kisses the shell of his ear, kisses the bruise on his neck. There will be time for confessions and discussions in the morning, once the night has bled away. But he can’t let this moment pass without acknowledgment. Without proof this is real. And then Merlin shivers, tries to dig himself deeper into Arthur’s chest. Arthur smiles. “Welcome back, my indigo dream.” 


End file.
